My Imagination turned out to become a gaping illusion !!

Well, this term “Internship” or popularly known as SIP among the b-school fraternity is indeed a vibrant phase for any management student with mixed emotions running all over. It was no different for me, with the complete first year passed by nagging about “are lectures in the class rooms really practical in the real world?” and every professors' answer to that would be an unconvincing “Yes”, hence I took internship as an opportunity to test this phenomena. Therefore on that note I looked forward to the program with excitement.

As I was supposed to choose the area of interest in which you wish to undertake the project, I promptly picked Operations or Systems. With the SIP selection process at its peak during the month of October, I finally got an implementation project on ERP at ITW India Ltd, on the basis of my background it was like a project made just for me. With high expectations and motivation I wanted to make the most from what the “real world” had to offer!

Hence, I set sail for this journey ahead with great hope and deliberation. When you have never seen the face of an office culture, your best pal is your imagination and oh boy! Did my imagination run wild with this curiosity? But I certainly forgot that we live in the world where “jo dikta hai wo nahi hota hai” and my imagination turned out to become a gapping illusion. Let me tell you where my imagination went wrong, first you or your project are never a priority, second people always have better things to do than you, every idea you come up with seems immature no matter how strong rationale you have to backup your thoughts, no wonder change management is an important subject of the MBA course, another fact is that not every office environment is that of google or facebook and younger crowd is more annoying than the seniors.

But, I have to admit that these couples of months have undoubtedly made me if not the best but a better manager. The will for meeting the high expectations and demand of the company always kept my learning wheal on high gears and the force to perform kept the lamp of motivation ignited. In some aspects my imagination did hit the target to state a few, your thoughts or recommendations are considered at some point of time and are debated, tasks and responsibilities are completely entrusted on you making you feel required and gave me a great exposure for instance I was given the task of vendor evaluation and selection, my mentor told me to present a report suggesting one vendor among six of them and left this critical task completely on my shoulders and the day I presented the report the entire team was impressed, this gave me an important learning, as a leader never tell your team how to reach the goal just mention what is your goal and they will surprise you with the best results. Finally as days passed by I saw that there is a connect between the typical classroom theories and the real corporate world practices I recall one of my professors telling me “Business works mostly on gut feeling or intuition, but the foundation for that feeling comes from what you learn in these class rooms!” surprisingly I found resemblance in what he said and what I saw in these couple of months, I said to myself the road taken was completely worth it!